Reencuentros (Descarga Sarl)

Maraca and His Latin Jazz All-Stars

Released September 12, 2011

DownBeat Five-Star Review

YouTube:

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=AlmBh24cqRU&list=OLAK5uy_mR227DH47tRiNqPH78WlitXUVldLKW4aI

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/album/3FEowDy1JUuoYatPpPri6b?si=ZtbY4lU9Q_eCG-myWLYouA

About:

Twelve years ago, I wrote about Orlando “Maraca” Valle as the Great White Hope of the Cuban flute. Today, he is its finest exponent, and Live At The Grand Theater of Havana is the album he was born to make.
Maraca is a man of many guises. He can play those perfectly round notes like his mentor, Richard Egues, or he can set his flute aflutter buzzing and riffing to his heart’s content. At all times, he is unmistakably Maraca.
Ever since his début album, Fórmula Uno, Maraca has been stretching beyond traditional Cuban music into Latin Jazz. Paying homage to his elders, but always with an eye to the future.
In this live recording Maraca is accompanied by his Latin Jazz All Stars, and the title is not hyperbolic. Horacio “EL Negro” Hernández, Latin master of the extended drum kit, matches Maraca’s versatility, commanding a palette that ranges from the terribly tender to the simply terrific. Harold López-Nussa, still in his twenties, is making Uncle Ernán very proud. He can stand a montuno on its ear, bring in da funk with his fills or evoke the giddy heights of a Chucho Valdés flight of fancy, from one moment to the next, without prior notice. Giovanni Hidalgo is the Tasmanian Devil of the conga drums, playing six of the them at the same time, probably because there is no room for more on stage. He knows his Tata Guines down to his fingernails, and he learned Patato’s music lesson well.
From Canada, by was of Ronnie Scott’s in London, comes Hugh Fraser and his cosmopolitan trombone. Those who’ve heard David Sánchez emote with Charlie Haden and the Prague Symphony know his tenor sax goes down easy like the vintage red wines he enjoys. One of the album’s many delights is listening to violinist Sayaka trading fours with Maraca. Of course, she hails from Japan, where Cuban music is second only to its own, and not by much. Feliciano Arango is a true feliciano, or happy-go-lucky fellow. Listen to his electric bass holding the fort in the absence of a piano in “Manteca”. Enrique Lazaga is a guiro practitioner to remember, half-a-century after Gustavo Tamayo.
It is distinguished company that Maraca keeps in this album, but it is the Orquesta de Cámara de La Habana under the direction of Iván del Prado, that takes the album to another level. Listen to the audience respond to the pizzicato fugue near the end of Guido López-Gavilán’s “Camerata en Guaguancó”. When was the last time you heard a chamber orchestra in a Latin Jazz concert? It is the Orquesta that brings Maraca’s gift for melody (in both composition and performance) to its fullest expression. Maraca’s own “Danzón Siglo XXI” can sit beside Cervantes’ “Serenata Cubana” without blushing. His “Afro” may not be as blue as Mongo’s, but it is haunting on its own.
Some artists, having attained a considerable measure of acclaim, sit back and rest in their laurels. Regrettably, this has happened only too often in Latin Jazz. A sameness pervades much of this genre’s output in the past decade. The same old warhorses are trotted out to ever diminishing results. Boredom sets in. It takes something like Live At The Grand Theater of Havana to make you prick up your ears and renew your faith in the music.
Nat Chediak

Track Listing:

1. Camerata En Guaguancó (Live) 4:33

2. Afro (Live) 10:00

3. Danzón Siglo XXI (Live) 7:41

4. Noche De Batá (Live) 10:11

5. Manteca (Live) 10:33

6. Serenata Cubana (Live) 4:11

7. Parque Central (Live) 8:53

Personnel:

Orlando Valle “Maracas”: flutes

Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez: drums

Harold lupez Nussia: Piano

Sayaka: violin

Giovanni Hidalgo: congas, bata, timbales percussion set

Feliciano Arango: bass

Julio Padron: trumpet, fluggelhorn

David Sanche: tenor saxophone

Hugh Frase: trombone

Yusef Diaz: keyboards

Enrique Lagaza: guiro

Havana Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Yvan Del Prado

Recorded live January 12, 2010, at El Gran Teatro de La Habana’s García Lorca Concert Hall (Havana, Cuba)

Review:

It’s been more than 20 years since Cuba’s bestof-times/worst-of-times musical renaissance astonished everyone who was paying attention. In that time, Cuba has been fully reintegrated as a world capital of music, and a transcendental generation of players who emerged at the end of the ’80s and beginning of the ’90s— in Cuba, from Cuba, or connected to Cuba— has progressed from prodigy status to being mature, mid-career masters. Luxurious and lively, flutist Orlando “Maraca” Valle’s Reencuentros shows him at a new level of artistic growth. It’s an international dream Latin jazz band—the “all star” billing is no hype—coupled with a marvelous, reallyexisting 18-piece Cuban string orchestra. Part of the dreamlike quality of the project is to hear Puerto Rican, U.S.-based Cuban and Cuban-Cuban playing together as if there were no obstacles. They’ve been putting their heads together whenever they get the chance, and the mutual admiration illuminates the music. Horacio “El Negro” Hernández pushes Maraca like no previous drummer I’ve heard. With Giovanni Hidalgo on congas, and bassist Feliciano Arango (who powered the colossal NG La Banda), the tumbaos are deep. Cuba’s best-known güirero, septuagenarian Enrique Lazaga, scrape-drives “Danzón Siglo XXI.” It’s not a salsa band; it’s orchestral Cuban jazz, combining Maraca’s flute with tenor (David Sánchez), trumpet (Julito Padrón), trombone (Hugh Fraser), and violin (the Cuban-trained Sayaka Katsuki), along with a synth player (Yusef Díaz). Pianist Harold López-Nussa is a rising star, but more about him in a minute. The tunes stretch out, sometimes to double-digit minutes. The recording is live, in front of a packed-out Cuban audience, and comes packaged together with an impressively produced DVD of the entire two-hour concert, which took place at Havana’s Gran Teatro. The opener is a number that has in the last few years accomplished the uncommon feat of becoming something of an orchestral standard: Tchaikovsky Conservatory graduate Guido López-Gavilán’s “Camerata en Guaguancó,” better known in its version by Havana’s Camerata Romeu. Maraca’s compositions are excellent, and they also play “Manteca” (with Maraca on piccolo and Giovanni Hidalgo in the Chano Pozo role) and Ignacio Cervantés’s “Serenata Cubana,” turned into a bluesy solo vehicle for David Sánchez on tenor. This album’s 28-year-old pianist, Harold López-Nussa, is attracting a lot of attention these days. On El País De Las Maravillas, his fourth date as a leader, he displays his version of the toolkit Cuban pianists have developed: conservatory touch, jazz extemporaneity, effortless metrical gymnastics and juggling of polyrhythm and counterpoint, a studied approach to form, awareness of history, impeccably cosmopolitan taste—and the ever-present expectation that the player might decide to bust a montuno and make everybody dance. This is López-Nussa’s gigging trio, plus tenor guest David Sánchez on four cuts. He was trained as a “classical” performer before switching to jazz, and he clearly knows 19thcentury Cuban, Spanish and French piano music. The telepathic drummer is brother Rui Adrian López-Nussa, and the bassist is Felipe Cabrera, who in the late ’80s provided support for a young Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Both contribute one tune, while most of the rest of the compositions are López-Nussa’s. He’s a skilled composer, and this is a repeatably listenable, well-thought-out record.

Ned Sublette (DownBeat)